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I enjoy prowling around the margins, visiting the smaller companies, where you find good ideas and wishful thinking in equal measure.

The annual excesses of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) are behind us. The news media were there in force, the analysts have analyzed, the bloggers have blogged, the pundits have punded. And now it's my turn to weigh in.

HDTV was the visual focal point. Some new screens can be measured in square yards, and everybody is doing 1080p, not that there's yet any content for that resolution. Although consumers are expected to buy $1.4 billion worth of HDTVs this year, the manufacturers would probably sell 50 percent more if they weren't embroiled in the stupid format war between Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD. Both sides were loudly claiming victorydespite the complete lack of content, with nothing more than promises from studios to produce titles for the camp to which they'd sworn allegiance.

The solution needn't be complex: One camp swallows its pride and allows the other to "win," but first they cross-license their technologies and incorporate some portion of the losing technology into the winner's. They modify the name of the winning technology (say, to "BDVD" or "HD-Ray") and share the royalties. The former combatants produce identical-functioning drives and compatible content. Both sides declare victory. Legions of PR people stream forth to explain that the antagonism of the past several years was a necessary part of the creative process to ensure the best possible product, and that consumers are the real winners.

As enjoyable as those main-floor, multiacre booths are, I enjoy prowling around the margins, visiting the smaller companies, where you find good ideas and wishful thinking in equal measure. There's nothing wishful about home-level IP telephony, however. It's a healthy, growing market. You can get IP telephony independent of your computer from your cable company or with a cable or DSL connection with Vonage or a similar service. When it comes to computer-based IP telephony, however, Skype is the brand to beat.Continue reading...

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About the Author

Bill Machrone is vice president of technology at Ziff Davis Publishing and editorial director of the Interactive Media and Development Group. He joined Ziff Davis in May 1983 as technical editor of PC Magazine, became editor-in-chief in September of that year, and held that position for the next eight years, while adding the titles of publisher and... See Full Bio

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